Nothing finished but getting there. Sums up where I am with Everything at the moment!

The blanket is growing. I’m going to continue until the whole ball of wool is used up (providing there’s enough to complete a ‘block’ of pattern). I swear the ball gets no smaller no matter how many rows I do. It’s like when Prometheus stole fire from the Gods. Zeus had him bound to a rock and an eagle ate his liver out of his body only for it to grow back again and get pecked out and eaten all over again. Every single day. Maybe not exactly like that but it has parallels. Give me that. I swear the ball grows back every night and will never diminish.

I tried a new recipe and made a bakewell-flavoured bundt cake. Bundt cakes aren’t the easiest to make. You have to cook the cake for longer than in conventional shallow cake tins. They can end up crusty and dry on the outside and still mush on the inside. The recipe came from Dolly Bakes: Bundts on the brain

The cake molded beautifully; I coated the Bundt tin with melted coconut oil followed by sieved icing sugar (turned upside-down and tapped to dislodge the excess). Perfect. The flavour was really nice but I confess to finishing it in the microwave because I wasn’t convinced the middle was cooked.

The Christmas Pudding mold came in useful to create a Chocolate Biscuit Cake to look like a Christmas pudding. The holly is real and pinched from Shouty Man – his holly grows over into my garden. Not complaining – it’s lovely.

And getting more and more into the Christmas spirit, I made some Coffee Cream Liqueur. I posted the recipe a long time ago, you may remember it. If not, here you go:

And tree decorations! Love finding pretty new decs for the trees! These lovely hearts came from The Flying Tiger:

The reindeer are from Penneys – little and cute!

A robin on a post box (from Mr Dunnes – I added some red to his breast as he was a bit orange).

Am in love with this glass robin. It is far prettier iRL; my photo doesn’t do it justice at all.

And that’s about it!

Had a couple of family dramas but nothing that couldn’t be set right fairly quickly. I don’t do drama. It just niggles me. I once worked with a girl who burst into fugly, sobbing tears because somebody had tried (not succeeded) into breaking into her parent’s garden shed. Chicken Licken Drama Llamas! My partner’s motto is ‘If sh*t happens, deal with it’ and I think that’s the way to be.

Mr T treated me to some flowers today. Like a little bit of summer in a vase. The garden is falling asleep quite and looking a bit bleak. The heady, hot summer is long forgotten as hoolies swirl round the chimney pots and howl like...

A blanket with the pattern above was on an episode of call the midwife and inspired me to have a go at making one. It also makes for a lovely scarf if you stick to 3, maybe 4 blocks, depending on the yarn you use. I tried a pattern...

A very indulgent chocolate drip cake. Three tiers of Victoria sponge, sandwiched together with buttercream icing, covered with buttercream icing with white chocolate ganache poured over the top with lots of Maltesers for decoration...

Me and the tree

Hello there!

This is a blog of many things and reflects my interests as they come and go. You’ll find Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials along with embroidery, sewing, crochet, baking and papercutting. It’s fairly eclectic.

The tree has long roots in Ireland in a garden full of flowers with lots of birds, bees and butterflies.